Claiming historical precedent under federal law, they threatened to sue the Environmental Protection Agency if their request is turned down.

“We’re at a historic juncture. The Clean Air Act is clear that California can regulate emissions,” said Attorney General Jerry Brown. “I think the EPA administrator (Steve Johnson) will grant this, unless (President) Bush or Karl Rove order him not to.”

At a daylong hearing on California’s request — bolstered by officials from 11 other states that have adopted the same emissions standards — EPA officials gave no indication when they will decide.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, urging a quick decision on a request made 16 months ago, warned the EPA that the state will sue by Oct.25 if no decision is made.

Brown said a suit could come sooner. He charged the Bush administration with “acting in collusion with the auto and oil industries.” California is the only state, under the 1970 Clean AirAct, that can set its own vehicle standards, if it gets a waiver from the federal government. When California receives a waiver, other states can adopt California’s standards.

Much of the testimony before a four-member EPA panel focused on the technical and scientific basis for California’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the state’s successful history of securing about 50 waivers from the EPA to enact tougher-than-national standards.

State EPA Director Linda Adams and Robert Sawyer, head of the California Air Resources Board, said the stringent standards on cars and light trucks were reasonable, required no new technology, and gave the auto industry enough lead time to comply.

“We have been granted waivers for 40 years,” Sawyer said. “California has always been seen as a laboratory for innovation for the nation and the world.”

When Margo Oge, an EPA transportation official who oversaw the hearing, asked about the Oct.25 deadline, Sawyer said that was needed to allow time to implement the standards starting with 2009 model vehicles.

The tougher standards, phased in over time, are designed to cut vehicle emissions in California by 30percent by 2016. Vehicles account for 41percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the state.

An auto industry spokesman, Steve Douglas, told the EPA that California had not demonstrated “in any measurable way” how the stricter standards would have an impact on global warming. And he said state emissions controls are really a form of fuel efficiency standards that only the federal government can set.

“A patchwork of state fuel economy regulations is patently counterproductive,” said Douglas, director of environmental affairs for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. He said auto manufacturers on their own had made steady progress toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University climatologist who worked on the United Nation’s global warming reports, made the case to the EPA that climate change had “a unique impact” on California, from shrinking snowpack to increased wildfires and health hazards. That impact required stricter curbs on emissions, he said.

But Brown and officials from other states broke through the PowerPoint demonstrations to make impassioned pleas to the EPA to let states tackle global warming.

“I despair of the federal government taking a leadership role on global warming, so I’m asking only that the EPA allow the fire brigade, led by California, to do its job,” said Brian Frosh, a state legislator from Maryland.

, which recently enacted its own emissions standards modeled on California’s.

Later, at a hearing before the Senate Environment Committee, chaired by California Democrat Barbara Boxer, Brown critiqued the U.S. auto industry as capable of technological innovation channeled too much into greater size and horsepower — not fuel efficiency.

He cited auto industry opposition to seat belts, catalytic converters, air bags and fuel economy standards. “They say the requirements will cost too much and won’t work — history shows in every case they were wrong,” Brown said.

Boxer also urged the EPA to grant the waiver, and said she has asked Johnson, the EPA administrator, to appear again before her committee in June. Boxer and Johnson have tangled over several issues in recent months.

If Johnson testifies next month that he will approve the waiver, Boxer said, “then I personally will leave this platform and give him a big hug. Now, this may or may not matter to Mr. Johnson. It would be very different from most of our confrontations.”

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